The present invention relates in general to biological microarray techniques. More particularly, the invention provides a system and method for processing a large number of biological microarrays. Merely by way of example, the invention is described as it applies to 96-peg instrumentation, but it should be recognized that the invention has a broader range of applicability.
A biological microarray often includes nucleic acid probes that are used to extract sequence information from nucleic acid samples. The nucleic acid samples are exposed to the nucleic acid probes under certain conditions that would allow hybridization. Afterwards, the biological microarray is processed and scanned to determine to which probes the nucleic acid samples have hybridized. Based on such determination, the sequence information is obtained by comparing patterns of hybridization and non-hybridization. As an example, the sequence information can be used for sequencing nucleic acids, or diagnostic screening for genetic diseases or for the presence of a particular pathogen or a strain of pathogen.
The processing of the biological microarray prior to scanning is often performed by a fluidic system. For example, the fluidic system includes a fluidic station, which can wash and stain the microarray. With the advancement of the microarray design, the fluidic system often needs to be modified in order to improve automation and lower cost.
Hence it is highly desirable to improve techniques for processing microarrays.